Former 2:24 marathoner, now in my late 40s and hoping to maximally flatten the curve of my slide into senescence and mediocrity • Magazine writer, book editor and author, and commentator on the sport of distance running since 1999 • Adviser and confidant of other perambulators • Paradoxical hater of exercise fanatics • Chihuahua whisperer • Sentence-fragment impresario

Sunday, March 5, 2017

Training, Feb. 27 through March 5

87 miles in 13 runs. On Tuesday I took to a treadmill and gathered some mostly meaningless data that allowed me to figure out what my heart rate is at various faster paces (meaning, faster than I go on everyday runs unless it's by design). For example, if I run 11 MPH (5:27 pace) for three minutes, I'm at about 171, meaning that at that at sea level I could in theory click along at about 5:20 pace for maybe 10 or even 15 minutes before summarily keeling over. But I can't believe how much sheer turnover is required just to move at this velocity for any length of time.

I need to race soon, even if it turns out to be a bomb of a race, in the bad sense of bomb. At least I'll have something interesting to write about if that happens. I'm becoming exceptionally bored with this blogging enterprise because at this point it's the same shit week after week -- I ran a bunch, I might start doing workouts someday, but this week I got tired so I just acted more or less like an amped-up version of a fitness jogger. Which is precisely what I am, but for all manner of reasons I'll take it. But as it is my days are plenty full of generating words -- some for pay, some to waste time on social media that could be better spent in a dozen ways, some to communicate with friends and clients. I really want to spend about a week looking slack-jawed at whatever tickles my fancy om Netflix, which these days is another attempt to work my way through all six seasons of Lost one more time.